Language Arts Tuesday: More Foldables!!

Language Arts is by far one of my favorite subjects to teach. I have always been a reader and love to pass on that love to my students. I could definitely use a lot of my favorite foldables in many different ways: sequencing, cause and effect, author's purpose, etc., etc. The list could go on and on! However, the other side of Language Arts is also Writing and Grammar. I think a lot of time these areas might get over looked. If I was ever going to teach college, I'd teach How to Teach Writing 101 :)

Anyways, when I taught third grade, a lot of my students needed a review of their basic components of writing. So, I created this foldable:

 It was an excellent review of the important types of words. Many of my students couldn't remember a noun from an adjective. On each flap, the students wrote the definition and lifted the flap above to write examples.

 You can also include hints for the hard ones :)

This foldable is made by using full sheets of paper. The first thing to do is to decide how many flaps you want. I wanted 6 so I used 3 sheets of paper. Lay them on top of each other and stagger each one just a bit.
Next, fold them so that your layers make the flaps. This is a bit harder so don't actually crease the paper until you are sure tha tyou have them the way that you want.

I usually make sure to use multiple colors when modeling to the kids so they can see the difference. My students had a mix of whatever colors they grabbed from a stack of construction paper. I hope my directions were clear. But if anyone is interested in a photo tutorial, just let me know!

Happy folding!!

Have a blessed day,

Daily 5 Chart and set-up

Daily 5 is all the rage and I am loving it! Having never taught Kindergarten before, this set-up is very close to a Kindergarten friendly version of Reading Workshop. It definitely makes it work for me! I thought I would share the way that I have everything set-up in my room right now. (Although, I am really bad about moving things around as I figure out something that will work better!)

I am loving this simple chart. Each day I change the list of students down one row so that they get to start at a new station. I have my list of students on the left hand side (not showing the whole card because of it having student names). The adorable cards are found here at Ms. Crowder's Busy Bees. She has AMAZING resources, including the awesome posters that I used at each of my stations:

Word Work

My students can work on building words with the magnets or work with their letters with the different bags. Each bag has either a set of letters to put in order or 2 sets (1 upper case and 1 lower case) to match the upper and lower case letters. The other bucket contains a sight word book that I worked with the students on this week.

Read with Someone

My students can choose from 1 of 4 bags of books (different levels and genres) to buddy read with someone from their group. The area that this is in is a good little area from them to do this in because it's perfect to EEKK.

Listening to Reading

For my listening center, I have chosen 4-5 books for the week for the students to choose from. This seems to be way better for the students. We are still working on getting over the technology bridge of how to use a cassette player!

Working on Writing

In my writing station, I have the students choose from two different activities. The folder on the left is their pictionary that they began several weeks into school. The cards in the box have a picture on the front and the word on the back. Their other choice is their October journal. This is simply a cute cover stapled to the Lucy Calkin's writing paper.

My Read to Self is the students simply sitting at their seats with either a booken chosen from their book box on the table or their very own book bag. Right now the only books in their book bag are sight word books and repeated reading books (Brown Bear mini-book).

How's Daily 5 going in your room?

Have a blessed day,

Brown Bear, Brown Bear...

I am so excited about teaching Kindergarten this year. It's so, so very much fun! The arts and crafts, the hands-on, and the engaging lessons are all just so me! I wanted to show you these adorable crafts that my students made with our shared reading a couple of weeks back.

Can it get any better than gluing things to popsicle sticks? Really! I'm being very serious. When I realized I was going to get to use popsicle sticks within days of starting to teach my Kinders, I was just a tad bit ecstatic! I was even more excited when the very next week we got to do the same thing for Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

I would love to be able to scan and share my print out, but I believe that it is a copy from The Mailbox magazine that my school has a subscription to. You definitely need to go check out your very own professional learning room for a copy!!

Have a blessed day,

Pinterest made me do it!

I think almost everyone has heard of Pinterest by now and most of us have joined it (and become addicted as crus to it!). I have seen some fantastic ideas our there that have really benefited my students already this year. For example, my Kinders have begun their learning adventure into the Daily Five by learning about Read to Self. Of course there are three ways to read to self: read the pictures, read the words, and retell. So as I spent one day on each of these, I made the adorable chart that hangs by my chair and easel.

This is such a great visual for my kiddos to see. I'm proud that when we review it most know the three ways and I see pretty much all of my students (who don't know right off the top of their heads) lancing over to look at the big 3 to jog their memories. I know that they can't read what I've written yet but it still seems to help!

I made this based on this chart:

I found this on Pinterest and it lead me to an amazing blog: Beg, Borrow, and Steal. Perfect namee for a teaching blog, right?

Have a blessed day,

Can you hear me now?

I have been warned that Kinders do not do anything quietly. Since I have a 3 year old.... I can totally believe that! I'm praying that God placed me in our church's preschool this summer to prepare me for my new adventure this year. However, by the end of the year my new pumpkins will definitely need to be learning to do more read-to-self than read-to-everyone-in-the-room! I might even have a couple of wonderful new little ones who will say that one phrase "I can't concentrate with all this noise!". Who knows, maybe that's just a 3rd grade thing for them to say. At any rate, I really wanted to have a couple of Whisper Phones.If you have never heard of these, they are "phones" that the students can place to the ear and whisper read to themselves. This is supposed to help concentration and through that fluency and comprehension. You can check out real Whisper Phones like those below by clicking on the picture to link you to the page.

Mine are a tad bit less high-tech looking. I believe Scholastic also has some that look more like mine do, just the horseshoe shape.

My wonderful husband actually made these more me. Love that man! I told him what I wanted to do and showed him pictures. (Don't you just love Google?) He went (very happily) off to Lowe's for me and found the pieces up above. He even glued them together for me :) I didn't want to make an entire class set in case they aren't as useful as I think they will be. But this way, I have several to work with if I need them. I'm thinking that I might even try introducing them to kids in guided reading groups. Lots of possible ways to use them. Do you use anything like this? How do they work best for you?
Have a blessed day,

Someday Crafts: Whatever Wednesday

Summer Learning Band Wagon :)

There have been a lot of blogs doing different book studies. While I was a little late to jump on those band wagons and read along I am definitely loving all the creative ideas that are coming along with others' studies! I thought I might share with everyone what I am reading this summer. The very first book I have read cover-to-cover since it'll be the book club that my grade level does next year. I have a feeling most of us have heard of this one:

Image courtesy of Amazon.com

I really enjoyed this book! I always think it's really helpful to be able to see exactly how others introduce a topic. So it was wonderful to be able to read an almost scripted lesson for how the Sisters introduce the different components of the Daily 5. I'm really excited about introducing this into Kindergarten since I am way more familiar with a workshop set-up from teaching 3rd grade.

Now... onto my other reading! These are books that I am reading bits and pieces of here and there. I've read certain chapters in some of them, every word in others, and just looked up topics in a couple of them.

So, what's in my stack (sorry for the blurry/shiney photo!)? Well, from top to bottom:

• The Art of Teaching Reading by Lucy Calkins
• Kindergarten Literacy: Matching Assessment and Instruction in Kindergarten by Anne McGill-Franzen
• The Literate Kindergarten by Susan L.Kempton
• Guided Reading by Fountas and Pinnell
• Spaces and Places by Debbie Diller
• Classroom Routines That Really Work for PreK and Kindergarten by Kathleen Hayes and Renee Creange
• Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller
• Talking, Drawing, Writing: Lessons for Our Youngest Writers by Martha Horn and Mary Ellen Giacobbe

I know, I know... what about my summer vacation? I promise that I am enjoying my vacation while I do a bit of professional learning too! Kinder is going to be a completely different world compared to 3rd. I just want to be prepared! So, what are you reading this summer?

Have a blessed day,